No licensed photo archive of the Merlin Theatre exists online — but the pictures are not lost. The best surviving images live in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine captures of the venue’s own website (this domain, 2006–2011), in the city’s renovation coverage, and in Budapest’s public photo archives. This page maps where they are, since … Read more
The Merlin Theatre was founded in 1991 by the actor-director Tamás Jordán and the actress Kati Lázár, who ran its acting school together; László Magács led its English-language section from 1992 and the whole theatre from 2003. Around them grew the companies that defined the venue — the English-language Madhouse troupe, and a young Krétakör … Read more
The Merlin Jazz Club ran from April 1991 to September 1994 inside the newly opened Merlin Theatre at Gerlóczy utca 4, and in those three years it brought Pat Metheny, Al di Meola and a roll-call of Hungarian jazz greats to a converted transformer hall near Deák tér. It ended not with the theatre but … Read more
Gerlóczy utca 4 opened in 1928 as downtown Budapest’s electrical transformer station — a two-storey Art Deco building by the architect Virgil Borbíró. It fed the Belváros grid until the late 1950s, became the Merlin Theatre in 1991, stood empty from the end of 2011, and was renovated by the city in 2022–23 for a … Read more
The Merlin Theatre (Merlin Színház) closed on 31 December 2011, after twenty years at Gerlóczy utca 4, when its arrangement for the city-owned building ran out. The company behind it moved across the river and reopened the former Átrium cinema in 2012, but the Merlin itself never returned: the hall stood empty for eleven years … Read more
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